Deploying this site+and many others easily
It should be easier to build things online. I don’t think that is a controversial statement, but sometimes it feels like 80% of the work is just getting something online. We’ve gone from FTPing our own files directly to the server, to using k8s to deploy a blog.
I worked on Glitch, with the goal of making it easier to deploy your own personal site in minutes. We abstracted away all of the complex hosting, so you just needed to focus on the content. Glitch is a great tool for getting a blog or link page set up, but I need something that can host my blog and my tools.
I’m a huge fan of Railway, and it’s almost always what I’d reach for post-heroku. Easy deployments, spinning up databases and linking everything together.
However, I’m looking for something I can tinker with myself and host on a simple DO droplet and that lead me to Easypanel. It uses the same nixpacks as Railway. You can fall back to a Dockerfile or Heroku buildpack, as well.
Project creation in EasyPanel. You can use NixPacks, Heroku buildpacks, or a Dockerfile.
Setting up a new instance is incredibly easy, you just click “deploy to DigitalOcean” from the Easypanel Marketplace.
Templates
I love to tinker. I love to play with new pieces of software, and then delete them and hopefully not pay too much for the experience.
List of templates available in EasyPanel. Spin up web services and databases with a few clicks.
Easypanel comes with a large database of “templates”, which is just a fancy way of saying a Dockerfile that installs the piece of software and gets it set up correctly in Easypanel.
If I wanted to create a new Ghost blog, it’d be as easy as clicking the button and letting it set up the service and database for me.
Creating a new Ghost blog in EasyPanel.
There are a ton of templates to choose from, and when I’m bored I’ll just set up something like AllTube, a GUI for youtube-dl.
Site Analytics: Umami
I don’t want to use Google Analytics, ever again! Umami is a self hosted, privacy focused, alternative to Google Analytics. I’m just seeing the page visits, views, and bounces.
Umami stats
Setting up was a quick click, some configuration changes in the environment variables and ✨ it works ✨. Now I can create a snippet for every site I create.
List of websites that have been created in Umami for tracking
Photos: Photoprism
Just like Google Analytics, I’d love to replace Google Photos in my life with something that I’m hosting myself.
PhotoPrism does everything I need: categorizes my photos, puts faces to names, and automatically groups photos together based on date and location. It gives me a place to browse through all of my photos on the web, without needing to put all of my photos in iCloud or Google Photos.
Screen in photoprism showing recent photos, my legs and a mouse
Image Hosting: Minio
I don’t want to talk about this lol. I just wanted to be able to easily drag screenshots / files into Dropshare and give a link to img.keith.is.
Unfortunately, I ended up with a S3 compatible storage solution. I don’t really recommend this, nor do I think I could put together the steps to set it up again, but it works 🤷‍♂️. Good luck!!
Minio S3 compatible storage
